Dark Stranger Immortal (The Children of the Gods #3)(26)

Handing Kian the empty bottle, she curled into his embrace and closed her eyes.





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D A L H U

Sitting in a darkened corner of the nearly empty pub, Dalhu glanced at his phone. It was after two in the morning, and still no word from his men.

After trolling four clubs, he had given up, finding reprieve in this modest establishment. Here he could breathe, as opposed to those bastions of depravity where he’d found the stench of mortals packed tightly like sheep in a pen hard to endure.

It wasn’t only the occasional nasty odor of a sweaty, unwashed body— that he could’ve handled easily. It was the cocktail of other smells mortals produced that had gotten to him—the hormonal outpour of their various emotions—lust and anxiety, greed and envy, rejection and despair, fear…

Nauseating.

And the ogling looks he’d gotten from the females, and some of the males, had disgusted him. No decorum, no modesty. It was Western fetid decay at its worst.

The clubs were brothels and drug dens combined. Except, unlike the brothels, money didn’t exchange hands for sexual favors granted or received.

The money bought the drugs, and sometimes the drugs also bought the sex.

But mostly sex was free.

Except, when it was not. He had spied a few prostitutes working the crowd.

Dalhu took another sip from his drink and shifted in the booth, trying to find a comfortable position for his long legs. The damned thing wasn’t built for someone his size.

As it turned out, he didn’t have to wait long till texts from his men began coming in, admitting defeat.

Truth be told, he hadn’t expected them to succeed. There were hundreds of clubs throughout the big city, and finding an immortal with only seven men on the job was like sifting through rocks at the bottom of a stream— hoping to find gold. Even with the reinforcements due to arrive in a few days it would be more of a miss than hit game.

Where the hell did the bastards go hunting? There must be a way to narrow the search.

Think, damn it.

Where would the privileged sons of bitches hang out? What kind of clubs would appeal to their spoiled sensibilities?

The fuckers were filthy rich—capitalizing on their stolen knowledge and amassing untold fortunes. They claimed it was all in the name of helping humanity. As if getting obscenely wealthy in the process was just a byproduct of their noble cause. And as the lucky bastards were known to play nice with each other, everyone got to share in the loot.

They are so full of shit…

They claimed they wanted to bring progress and freedom to the mortals.

Freedom

from

oppression,

freedom

from

hunger,

hard

labor,

discrimination…

What an idiotic and naive notion.

Mortals were not designed to be free. With their herd mentality and the ease with which they were brainwashed by their own leaders and their misguided, blindsided media, it would only take one insane and charismatic ruler to end their world.

Which the bleeding-heart idiots made entirely possible by providing mortals with nuclear know-how.

From Annani’s clan perspective, it had been a last resort, desperate move.

The forces of evil, as they had called the Nazis and their cohorts, had been winning the war. Navuh’s clever machinations had finally been working, and about to bring humanity’s age of enlightenment to a crushing and devastating end.

The clan-sponsored Industrial Revolution, together with the new ideas and philosophies they had promoted, had been threatening to catapult mortals into a new era.

That progress had to be arrested and crushed.

Navuh had maneuvered the events that brought on World War I, and when that war hadn’t achieved the desired results, he had easily manipulated the weak and appeasing Western leaders into allowing World War II to go on unchecked while millions had perished.

Humanity had been on the verge of being plunged back into the Dark Ages.

The cataclysmic losses and devastation would’ve pushed humans back into the arms of their various religions. And those, influenced by Navuh’s propaganda, would’ve blamed the brutal blow on their followers’ immoral behavior. They would’ve zealously shunned their newfound ideas and technology as ungodly and greedy, blaming them for earning their God’s wrath.

It had been a beautiful and simple plan that had worked time and again in both enlightened and backward societies.

Humans were so gullible.

But the clan had intervened. They had done the unthinkable, supplying the Allied forces with the tools to develop a nuclear bomb.

For a while, the technology had been closely guarded by the West, but eventually others had gotten their hands on the secret, and now even Navuh’s protégés had it.

Funny, how it had come back to bite Annani and her progeny. Their stupidity now threatened to bring their own annihilation.

The virus that had helped bring down Iran’s nuclear facilities had only slowed production, as nothing short of a full-out invasion could’ve brought it to a halt. But by interfering, they had tipped their enemies off.

He had their location. Sort of.

Think! Dalhu commanded himself again. What kind of clubs would the rich go to?

Motioning the waitress over with his empty glass, he placed a hundred dollar bill on the table and pointed to the seat across from him.